


blood hands

by tempalays



Series: deus ex machina [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Gen, Gun Violence, Murder, Protective Bucky, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Uncle Bucky Barnes, also featuring rebecca the cat, i guess?, more running around hells kitchen, no shipping i repeat there is no shipping, parental figure bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 00:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19284649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempalays/pseuds/tempalays
Summary: “Listen man, I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m really not. Just give me the wallet and we can be on our way, alright?” Peter is so..Petereven when he’s fighting people in the streets of New York, and it makes Bucky chuckle while he takes a seat on a crate on the roof of a building two buildings down to watch the situation unfold.The guy that Peter’s got tries to punch him, he fails, obviously and he falls back against the force from hitting Peter’s hand and curses incessantly. Bucky laughs. He’s been here.“Really dude?Really?Listen we both know I’m not gonna let you go and honestly? I don’t really like hurting people so instead I just scare them into not doing bad stuff y’know,”‘Shut up oh my god, Kid’Bucky knew the kid was mouthy but with petty criminals? Over a wallet?-Or, Bucky continues to find himself involved somehow in Peter Parker's irresponsible cross-city shenanigans except this time with slightly less gunshots and more trauma from the past.





	blood hands

**Author's Note:**

> im... sorry this took so long? before we get going, this is a direct sequel to trips in magenta so go read that first. also, i am WELL aware that its impossible to trek across nyc via rooftop and also that it would take ages but creative liberties yeah? also matt does that but just more localised. i tried to make up for it by making the bus route realistic.
> 
> enjoy!

“Peter  _ Parker _ ?” Sam puts his beer on the countertop while Bucky scratches Rebecca’s chin.

 

He picks Rebecca up with his metal arm and walks over to his fire escape door, nodding at the balcony. “I’m telling you Sam, he was right there.”

 

Rebecca jumps off onto the countertop.

 

“Peter Parker, Spiderboy, comes to  _ you  _ at three a.m after he got shot? What did you do, man?” It’s about a month after Peter’s incident (That’s what Bucky’s calling it anyway.) and Sam’s come down to Brooklyn for a few days from DC. He comes down and stays at Bucky’s place for once a month, just for a few days when he’s got time. Sam likes to know that he’s holding up alright, especially seeing as Bucky’s on his own down here. Other than Peter Parker and Strange, but Peter’s a kid and Strange is an ex-neuroscientist turned Wizard and even amongst everything he’s gone through, magic remains a pay-grade above wherever Bucky’s at. 

 

“What do you mean what did I do,” Bucky leans on the counter. “I took him over there, put him on table I mean, and stitched him up. Easy job.” He leaves out how bad his hand was shaking as he ran between rooms trying to grab gauze and a needle and vodka. Goddamn. That  _ vodka.  _

 

Sam’s laughing at him but Bucky can’t tell if it’s a ‘This is actually funny’ laugh or a ‘Man, what the fuck laugh’ but he keeps at it, Rebecca running into the other room from the slap of Sam’s hand hitting his thigh.

 

“I’m gone for a month and I come back and you’re babysitting Peter Parker? Bucky Barnes who let no one into his apartment for like three weeks after you moved in and now you’re dragging Peter Parker in here to help him out because he’s messing around in New York? Geez man.” Sam shakes his head, but Bucky can’t help but clench his metal fist in annoyance. 

 

Peter’s just a teenager and Bucky knows that he’s an Avenger or whatever (He thinks there should be a legal age limit if he’s honest.) but the kid got  _ shot _ and Sam’s laughing about it like it’s nothing. Even if he did turn out fine in the end, and even if he  _ does _ have those fast healing a abilities like Bucky he’s still not happy that Sam’s so  blasé about it. “It was more than just helping him out, Sam. He’s just a kid.” 

 

“And he’s dealt with worse than a bullet wound, Buck, he got lost in space. And doesn’t he have that crazy fast healing thing that you have? He was fine.” Bucky sighs as Sam goes back to his beer. It’s warm out, and Bucky’s hung those flower basket things on his balcony and in the New York spring they’re doing surprisingly well for themselves. The longer Bucky goes the more he starts to look after stuff, other than himself. First the cat, then Peter, then the flowers. It’s an odd order, like he’s gone from doing the most difficult to least but that’s Bucky in a nutshell.

 

Bucky shrugs. He reckons a gunshot wound to the stomach is more painful than getting lost in space but he’s not willing to argue about it. One is an existential dread where you just sit there thinking about your own death, the other one a metal projectile going through your body while you bleed everywhere and your body shuts down trying to make sure you don’t die. 

 

Although thinking about it, Bucky’s been shot a lot of times, but even then it didn’t hurt him so really he has no basis to be arguing anyway. 

 

“So what are you gonna do about him then.” Sam leans back on the plastic barstool by the counter, across from the table. Bucky went to some store called ‘Ikea’ on Bruce’s recommendation, that being  _ ‘It’s cheap and looks nice and they have good meatballs.’  _ and a barstool probably wasn’t the best choice in hindsight, but there was something so lonely about sitting alone at an empty dinner table that Bucky just stopped eating at home altogether, going out to random places or grabbing a sandwich from a deli and eating it while walking around. 

 

He still does sometimes, just grab a takeout and eat it while walking around different parts of New York, and sometimes he’ll end up in Queens or somewhere thereabouts and run into Peter. It’s only happened two or three times but Peter’s gotten into the habit of calling him the ‘friendly neighbourhood Bucky Barnes’ while he steals the sandwich out of Bucky’s hands, taking a bite, and then going on his way down the street leaving Bucky behind him with his salt beef sandwiches that are missing a hunk of bread and meat. Bucky pretends to be mad but really he has no idea when Peter finds time to eat when he spends half his day gallivanting around Queens pretending to be an insect but  _ ‘Actually Mr Barnes its an arachnid not an insect, they’re different things.’  _ and Bucky just replies to him with  _ ‘Kid when I was your age they hadn’t even figure out how to put beer in a can yet.’. _

 

Anyway, Bucky has no idea when Peter even eats so if he wants to steal a bite of his salt beef beigels once in a while thats fine with him. 

  
  


“What do you mean what am I gonna do with him. What  _ can _ I do.”

 

“I don’t know man,” Sam looks up from his phone. “Keep an eye on him? You’re the only one he's got out here now.” Bucky already knew this but hearing from someone else that Peter is (kind of) his responsibility makes him feel nerves that he’s never felt before in this life. He’ll remember to write this down later. (He went to his therapist saying that he was confused by all the emotions he has now, that he hasn’t had since before Hydra, so now he’s got a notebook where he writes down and describes all the new ones. He’ll put this in later.) He still feels like he can just about manage himself, but god forbid something happens and he relapses or it turns out they didn’t get rid of everything when they took him to Wakanda. If Peter ever does see him as someone he can rely on someday, he doesn’t want to disappear just like everyone else has. That’s a big if though, one that probably won’t ever come to fruition but it doesn’t stop Bucky from getting anxiety about it. (That’s one he learnt too. An-xi-ety. There’s different types and he’s not very good at recognising what he’s feeling and why but he’s getting there.)

 

He walks back around the kitchen and into the living room, flopping back onto the couch, one of the plates of his arm snags on a thread somewhere. 

 

“You want me to patrol him?” 

 

Sam laughs. “Not  _ patrol _ patrol. Just. follow him around. Shadow him, that’s it. And I don't want anything, you’re the one worrying about this kid.”

 

“And you’re  _ not _ ?” 

 

Bucky’s bewilderment of people not being more concerned about this truly doesn’t go away. It just doesn’t make sense to him. It didn’t make sense in Germany and it doesn’t make sense now, maybe he needs to go to talk to Pepper or someone who’s more responsible and ask what they think. “Bucky my man, he runs around in Tony Stark tech, he fought me, you,  _ and  _ Cap, he’s been to space, nearly died in space, came back, nearly died again. We’re in New York City and there’s no alien freaks, no natural disasters, no nothing. He’s fine.” 

 

Bucky doesn’t buy it for a second. 

 

“I can’t just follow him around New York though, isn’t that weird? And an invasion of privacy?” He’s considered doing this the week after Peter got shot just to make sure he was alright but he’d pushed the thought out of his mind almost immediately after because at the end of the day they’re both. Well. Bucky doesn’t like the word superhero because it sounds corny and he definitely isn’t one, and vigilante doesn’t fit either because Peter actually likes the cops (Bucky needs to fix that, at some point.) and neither of them do vigilante… stuff. And Avengers doesn’t work because the whole point of the name is that it belongs to people who Avenge the earth? Does Bucky trying to fight Thanos count? He doesn’t know and he’s spend too long trying to figure out how he fits into this group of earthly and non earthly people. He used to be able to fit in and justify the space he filled because he’s Steve’s friend but things have gotten murky since Steve came back.. Old and Bucky’s still trying to figure out where he fits in, in all of this. 

 

Sam shrugs, he’s not familiar with the etiquette involved in New York City crime fighting circles. “Sure you can. You spent how many decades before people found you? I’m sure you can go around Manhattan at night without being found Bucky.” 

 

That’s the one thing people always get wrong. It’s been years and people still think Steve just happened to find him that day. Bucky let himself get found, Steve knows that obviously, but for some reason no one ever realises it. 

 

Bucky doesn’t say anything else, just  _ hmphs _ in reply, still laying on the couch while Sam cracks open another beer. Rebecca comes to lay on him at one point, curling up on his chest while he kisses her on the nose, Sam taking a photo at some point thinking that Bucky doesn’t realise. 

 

They talk about other stuff; how Sam’s doing, what it’s like in D.C. whether he’s been talking to the rest of their buddies that are all quite literally worlds apart. It’s nice about them again, but Bucky’s happy to keep it to New York. If anyone needs him here he’s willing to help out but once you get past that border and he’s not so sure. It’s nice just.. Being a normal person, or at least trying to be. It’s hard when you have a metal arm and the face of a convicted terrorist but he covers it up decently enough when he’s really not in the mood to be bothered by people. He makes it work.

 

It was strange at the start; they had to do so much positive PR to make the public know that he wasn’t the same person he used to be. Had to talk about his trauma over and over and over again on radio and television and newspapers, with the same questions every time. It worked, mostly. He’ll see people though, once in a while, who don’t quite know how to react when they see him. Their faces will jump from scared to confused to ‘oh god this is awkward I can’t pretend I haven’t seen him’, so Bucky does the work for them and nods his head and smiles a little before continuing on his way. At least where he lives, they’re used to him. 

 

There’s a little Jewish deli a few blocks over that’s been there since around the time Bucky was born, he used to go there with Steve after school if they had any spare money lying around. One time Bucky punched a guy in the face who was getting surly with the waitresses and from then on whenever him and Steve would come in they’d get double the meat in the sandwich and a free box of milk for Steve ‘cause he was so skinny. He rediscovered it one day on one of his walks, it's just an inconspicuous little deli shop, but Bucky’s surprised that it’s not decked out in Captain America murals and shit. One thing he’s noticed is about half the places him and Steve used to frequent as kids that are still standing establishments, and even places he didn’t think him and Steve had ever gone to, were covered these plaques and murals to show that they have some tangential connection to Steve, and it’d be one thing if it was where their old school or park or whatever was, but him and Steve sure as hell weren’t knocking around in Greenwich Village when they were kids. It’s just a way to get money, Bucky respects the hustle and really other than him there’s no way for anyone to verify their claims, but it’s nice that this one deli shop is business as usual. 

 

People go in every day having no idea that Steve and Bucky were ever there, and it’s nice for Bucky to go back just to reminisce. No one blinks an eyelid, it’s not out of the ordinary for him to be hanging out in local places grabbing food, but Bucky reckons the owner of the place knows. He’s an old Jewish man, and whenever him and Bucky are on the Deli floor at the same time he gives Bucky a knowing look, as if they both know what happened that day when Bucky decked that old piece of shit. Bucky’s got a running theory that maybe he was a kid when it happened and watched Bucky do it, but he doesn’t want to ask and ruin the magic. 

 

Sam ends up leaving after he finishes his beer, he’s meeting someone else, so Bucky lifts Rebecca onto the couch and goes up to open the door for him. They hug each other, Sam reminding Bucky to look out for his kid before he goes and starts walking down the stairwell to leave. 

 

And then Bucky’s alone again, and now he has a whole other perspective on the whole ‘Should I shadow Peter for a night’ situation. It still feels… weird, but if Peter was doing something wrong then surely he’d know? It’s just the fact that the kid loses Tony and then is stupid enough to not only go out and do his Spiderman thing and a) Not wear his suit and b) Not wear his suit  _ and _ go to Hell’s Kitchen. It doesn’t sit well with Bucky and he’d be lying if he said he’d started leaving the door unlatched so Peter could at least drag himself in if he needed to, now that he’s set the precedent of coming to Bucky’s when he has urgent medical emergencies that he can’t deal with on his own. 

 

The fact that he even feels the need to leave his door a tiny bit open isn’t ideal, and he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t curious about what Peter gets up to. He knows he goes with the whole ‘Friendly neighbourhood Spiderman’ schtick for PR but really his suits seem way too high-tech for someone who goes around at night trying to stop petty theft. 

 

Bucky’s around at night sometimes, and he’d be lying if he hadn’t stopped his fair share of bad shit going down, it’s New York City at night after all, but it’s not like he’d consider it his day job. More like an occupational hazard. 

 

He spends a long time thinking about it, deliberating about whether to go or not, for so long that he doesn’t realise Rebecca nudging against his real arm (She realised that he’s not very responsive to the metal one so she generally stays on his right side.) to get him to go feed her, so he gives her some extra scratches under her chin and mumbles a soft  _ ‘Sorry sweetie’  _ while he goes to grab her food.

 

Sam calling Peter his kid is going round and round his head, and it’s true. Not that Peter’s his kid, that’s not true, but that over the past few weeks he’s truly become like a worried protective uncle over this goddamn Spiderkid that turned up like an injured puppy literally on his doorstep. 

 

It’s almost seven o’clock now, too late to be going out to check that Peter’s cut out the dumb shit, so he figures he’ll go tomorrow or the day after if he feels up to it. Tonight he’ll play with Rebecca (he feels bad for forgetting to feed her earlier) and look through the refrigerator to see what he’s got lying about and then watch some television, and spend his night being a normal person doing normal people things. 

 

He tidies the living room a little, there’s stuff everywhere- gatorade bottles and cat toys and papers, just random paraphernalia that Bucky’s found comes with living in a house that’s yours that people can contact you through (this is the first time in since the forties) that’s filled with items you actually want and care about. Since Peter was over last he bought a throw pillow for the couch, just simple gray one that he thinks looks nice with the brown of the broken in leather.

 

That’s another thing he’s learnt about; aesthetics. Appreciating what things look like and buying things that are pleasing to him, and arranging them all in a way that’s pleasing to him too. Before, he’d just buy things for necessity. If he needed something then he bought it, not thinking to care about what it looked like or how it felt, just so long as it fit the required purpose then Bucky didn’t care. When he was the soldier, there was no such thing as ‘to need’. He’d had to relearn that one too. That was one of the hardest.

 

There’s another plant on the coffee table in front of the couch as well, he was walking home one day and some guy at was selling plants on the side of the road so Bucky decided to grab one, it was a few bucks anyway, so now it’s sitting on his coffee table in direct view of the sun. He thinks it needs to get replanted soon, he looked it up on his phone and he can see the roots poking out at the bottom but he’s not sure where to buy plant pots.

 

It becomes clear a few hours later at around nine thirty that nothing productive is getting done tonight. He cleaned off the table two hours ago, ate some leftovers and played with Rebecca, and then sat on his couch and stared at the wall for a solid half before pacing around his bedroom over and over.

 

His therapist has talked to him about this. She said he should try and remove himself from the situation but this isn’t about the stuff he goes to his therapist for. This is about how he found Peter Parker with a gunshot wound in his stomach a month ago, and ever since then Bucky can’t help but worry every single night whether the kid is safe, because if Peter was telling him the truth then it’s a goddamn miracle that he managed to get shot in the Kitchen and drag himself to Brooklyn. The constant worry is ‘what if something else happened and he hasn’t managed to get here and he’s in an alleyway somewhere.’. Bucky knows that at least with the old suit Tony was aware what he was doing so if he got hurt he could press some panic button and he’d have a deus ex machina come save him but now that Tony’s gone, as far as Bucky’s aware there’s no one to call for backup apart from him.

 

If Sam was here Bucky would know exactly what he’d say  _ ‘C’mon man why are you pushing it back, if you’re worried about that kid then go out and check on him.’  _ and for once in his life Bucky listens to Sam (or, what Sam would do) because really it makes sense, what’s the point in him pushing back going to check on Peter to tomorrow or the day after and just feel anxious (?) the whole time when he could just get it over with tonight.

 

So that’s what he does. 

  
  


He’s kind of missed wearing his whole getup, he started to reclaim it a little bit especially after they fixed his arm up and it became his rather than Hydra’s, so he goes into the closet where he keeps his gear and grabs his black cargo pants and leather boots, the vest/shirt + combo and some gloves and gets dressed. It’s all black, and he’ll fit in with the darkness of the top of the Brooklyn apartment blocks. He really doesn’t think he’ll need weapons, his hand to hand is really good enough to deal with any potential situations that might happen (he’s thinking maybe running into some petty criminals or whatever on his way to Queen’s) but he’s wearing all of this which means that doesn’t leave the house without one of his Kali knives and at least one handgun strapped to him. He’s got space for four knives and four guns but that seems excessive so he goes with one of each, pulls the elastic out of his hair and kisses Rebecca goodbye, throwing his keys into his pocket and shutting out the lights. Going through such a domestic routine while wearing his gear feels so fucking strange, like all the colours have inverted but he knows once he’s out on the roof he’ll feel like himself again. 

 

He’s on one of the top floors for this reason, and once he’s sure no one is about to come out of one of the few apartments above him he clicks the door shut and runs up the stairs, jumping onto the railings and going from side to side to gain so speed just in case he’s off and someone ends up coming out and seeing him in Bucky Barnes the Avenger (?) getup. 

 

The fire exit comes undone easily once he’s at the top he makes sure its shut properly and figures out a route. Queen’s is North East from his apartment and he’s not in a rush, so he can take his time getting there. Once he’s in the borough it’ll be easy enough to find Peter; as fast as he is, he’s a kid in a red and blue suit that shoots webs and the fact that he swings across roads makes him hard to miss. Bucky’s found less conspicuous people in larger areas. 

 

It’s a mild night out, not too cold and not too warm and really Bucky would have liked to have spent this at home on his couch with Rebecca with some sort of tea and the fire door open to let the air in but you win some you lose him. It’s been so long since he’s done this and sometimes the gaps between buildings are larger than he anticipates, adrenalin spiking once his feet land on the other side. He reminds himself to judge the gaps better and keeps going, avoiding the most busy roads and sticking to side streets instead. He knows this city like the back of his hand, it was the same in 1940 as it is now, albeit with smaller buildings. 

 

Bucky gets across the city easily. His route is illuminated from headlights that reach tall enough for their light to lip over the roofs, and occasionally signs on the sides of buildings, and windows of apartments. He knows that a few people have noticed him on the opposite side of the road, and the glint of light bouncing off the metal of his arm would have given away who he is but he figures the people of New York are used to heroes jumping around the city by now. 

 

Once he starts getting closer to Queen’s he plans his route. The whole mission of whatever Peter’s crime fighting goal is, is to help random random people which means he’s probably going to be in the centre of Queens and then the side roads going off it. What makes it difficult is that Bucky needs to somehow be close enough to know where he's going but far enough that Peter doesn’t know he’s there, which honestly sounds simple enough since the kid seems oblivious most of the time. 

 

As he expects, it doesn’t take long. It takes him ten minutes, maybe fifteen until he hears Peter’s voice coming from a side street talking to Karen. 

 

Bucky’s not seen him in action since Germany and  _ goddamn _ the kid is fast. He’s not going as fast as he can but it’s still giving Bucky a run for his money. The point is to make sure he’s safe, not watch his every move so he ends up staying around a block from Peter so that he doesn’t have to go so fast to catch up with him. He’ll wait for a little while and watch where he’s goes and eventually follow. Peter doesn’t suspect anything (Bucky wasn’t expecting him to) but just after Bucky thinks that Peter hasn’t clocked him following him, Bucky’s waiting for him to surface again so can go for his next block, but Peter doesn’t come back up.

 

Realistically he’s probably run into something on street level that he’s dealing with, so Bucky leaves it for a few minutes, but Peter doesn’t come back. He eventually gets tired of waiting on the off chance that something has happened, so he goes to a building where he last saw Peter so he can try and get eyes on him and, yeah, he was right. 

 

There’s a couple of screaming girls that are running away towards one of the main roads that Bucky can see, a beat up Honda civic and and two, maybe three guys that Peter’s fighting. It’s not hard to piece together what’s going on,  _ ‘Good kid’ _ Bucky thinks as he watches the scene. Peter’s fine, he’s got it covered, the guys aren’t much of a match for him and they’re tuckered out now anyway. Peter doesn’t seem too tired either so Bucky heads back a few buildings to get some distance between the two of them, for when Peter moves off again.

 

The building he’s on now clearly has some rich folk inside it, it’s one of the ones that has grass across the top of it, but nothing else, no chairs or benches. Not a roof bar (Bucky steers clear of those during times like these, obviously) but still, there’s grass. He’s never understood the purpose of people planting grass on the top of buildings, he sees it all the time in Manhattan, and if there’s no one who goes up there then that surely means its for.. the birds? The only explanation that makes sense to him is that it’s a new age technology thing, but he still doesn’t get the point, and it just makes it difficult to get a good speed when he jumps off when he sees Peter leave the previous alleyway he was in. 

 

Instead of going straight ahead like has been, Peter swings across the road and through moving traffic, which causes an issue for Bucky because he can’t go onto street level and cross the road like any normal pedestrian. Peter ends up getting half a block down before Bucky even has a plan as to how he’s going to get across the street.

 

He figures that the only way to do this is to find a quiet side street and run across road, so now Bucky and are both going in different directions. It’s gotten significantly darker now, the time closing in on midnight which means that the further Peter gets the more difficult it’ll be to find him, as inconspicuous as his suit is. Bucky ends up lucking out and the reds in the city align at the perfect time so that there isn’t a single moving car on the street. He takes a leap of faith down into the street and runs across before any cars start moving and he makes it- just. There’s one of those old time spiral staircases that goes to the top of a building one street down from the avenue that he's on and he runs up it, using the railing to pull his way up and go faster. 

 

By the time Bucky’s at the top he has to assume that Peter’s taken a sharp left turn with the intention of staying left, and he goes about ten buildings down before he hears Peter, or, scuffling at that he assumes to be coming from a situation  _ related  _ to Peter, down on the ground.

 

“Listen man, I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m really not. Just give me the wallet and we can be on our way, alright?” Peter is so..  _ Peter  _ even when he’s fighting people in the streets of New York, and it makes Bucky chuckle while he takes a seat on a crate on the roof of a building two buildings down to watch the situation unfold.

 

The guy that Peter’s got tries to punch him, it fails, obviously and he falls back against the force of hitting Peter’s hand and curses incessantly. Bucky laughs. He’s been here.

 

“Really dude?  _ Really?  _ Listen we both know I’m not gonna let you go and honestly? I don’t really like hurting people so instead I just scare them into not doing bad stuff y’know,” ‘ _ Shut up oh my god, Kid’  _ Bucky knew the kid was mouthy but with petty criminals? Over a wallet? 

 

“But you’re not scared and you’re not listening which means I have to hurt you so. I’m sorry. In advance.” And Peter doesn’t even let the guy reply before punching him in the face. There’s a loud cracking sound as the guy falls to the floor, and as he goes his palm opens and the wallet falls out of his hand. Peter drags him to the side of the road so that doesn’t get hit by a car that didn’t see him lying there concussed on the floor.

 

“Karen can you take this for me?”

 

“Of course.” And a pocket in Peter’s side opens up which Bucky is assumes where he stores all of his reclaimed stolen goods before handing him in somewhere.

 

“You’d think that people would catch on that if they do bad stuff then I’m gonna come find them and when they don’t listen to me I’m gonna hurt them by now, don’t you think Karen?” Bucky doesn’t hear what his suit replies to him with but God does this kid make him laugh, imagine talking that much to someone you’re trying to fight, he was exactly like this in Germany six years ago and he hasn’t changed a bit. ‘ _ Has he considered how many more people he’d be able to help in a night if he didn’t spend so long talking to everyone’  _ Bucky thinks has he starts to follow him again, measuring his jumps and keeping his distance.

 

By now its nearly one, Bucky’s not tired at all, running through the city keeping him more alert and awake than he’s felt in a while. It’s like all the moving parts within him grinded to a halt and now they’re all starting back up again. It feels satisfying. 

 

The only thing that’s changing is the height of the buildings. Bucky looks down and realises that he’s significantly higher than he was a few minutes ago. It’s not alarming, a building is a building after all and he’s not going fast anyway. Peter’s still that close but not too close one block of buildings away, and it’s when Bucky looks around him, really looks around him, that he realises that he’s not in Queen’s anymore.

 

The buildings are taller and made of different material. It’s louder than before; more people and cars and buses, and it’s brighter too. Where the light previously was coming from the moon and too low streetlights, now it’s all neon and vibrant instead. Peter’s going at the same pace, building after building, not too fast, but not slow either. Not fast enough that he’s urgently getting somewhere and not slowly enough that he’s tired or injured. Just, a normal speed, uninterested in stopping but on his way somewhere. 

 

Bucky continues to follow.

 

And follow.

 

It’s been half an hour since the incident with the guy at the side of the road and Bucky’s been keeping an eye out on the roads beneath them. He’s not familiar with where he is, but if he’s on the ground he’d probably be able to figure it out. The only problem being that if he goes on the ground now he truly will lose Peter and won’t be able to find him, the red and blue of his suiting blending in with the city now, instead of sticking out. 

 

It’s not until he looks behind him for a second and sees the M50 on the road beneath him that he realises why Peter hasn’t stopped, and why they’re not in Queens anymore.

 

God  _ fucking  _ damn it.

 

Bucky starts running faster, needing to close the block between him and Peter to half a block instead because this stupid _ , idiot  _ kid is going back to Hell’s Kitchen when the last time he was there he got shot. Bucky thanks the imaginary Sam voice in his head from earlier that told him to just go out tonight instead of waiting it out for two or three days for no real reason, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to be here now genuinely babysit this kid.

 

At least he’s wearing a proper suit this time. 

 

Eventually Peter ends up going down onto street level, thank  _ god _ , because Bucky was tired of having to go across buildings. He’s able to close the gap between them a little more now. Peter may be excellent at jumping between things but the ground is where Bucky is in his element and he’s less concerned now that Peter is going to see him. 

 

They’re not on any main roads, but they’re in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen and it feels. Strange. Bucky’s not familiar with this place but it feels distinctly like he’s somewhere where he shouldn’t be, like he’s on someone else’s territory. He’s not scared, it just feels odd and he checks that he’s got his knife and gun still in place, wondering if it was a mistake to have only brought one of each.

 

Peter’s been going in a straight line for so long that somehow Bucky manages to not realise when he turns. He notices once he can no longer hear the familiar sound of webs and swinging from buildings. He’s just run past a junction so he turns on his heel and sprints back, looking around urgently. He could have only gone right or left so he takes a look own both side streets. At first he doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but around fifty meters to the right the metal shutters of an automated parking garage are slowly coming down to a close, and given that it’s the only sign of movement in the area Bucky assumes that Peter’s gone inside which makes the only issue getting there before the door shuts. 

 

He can’t see the door, just hear it moving but he assumes that when he first heard it was when it first started going down. Given the average height and speed of a normal parking garage door he’s got ten seconds to clear the shutter, fifteen if he’s being generous, but he’s goes with ten and sprints towards it. 

 

The garage isn’t flush with the street, it’s down a ramp and Bucky has to run down it and jump inside if he wants to get in. The gap is so small that he doubts he’ll make it through, and even if he does then he’s going on the assumption that the guy controlling the door isn’t on the immediate other side.  He figures that the best thing to do is try and get in and if there’s someone there then he’ll deal with it. _ ‘I’ll do what I can’ _

  
  


He makes it through by the skin of his teeth, the shutters clipping the toes of his boots as he falls inside. 

 

There’s no one there controlling it, which means it was remotely done which means that whoever is here was purposely waiting for Peter, and Bucky has no idea what the hell is going on. He wasn’t expecting to have to deal with this kind of thing tonight, but he knows that his reflexes will be there when he needs them. You can take as many Hydra memories from him as you want but assets they gave him? Those are there forever.

 

The place he’s in is definitely a parking lot. There’s no cars inside, but there’s the ticket toll gates and the paint on the ground marking the spots, but it’s silent. Places like this, they echo. Even if no one was saying anything Bucky would know he’d be able to hear people moving, but as far as he can tell, the place is empty. Nothing. And no one. 

 

The inside is familiar parking lot scenery; its grey with those shiny lacquered walls, and Bucky figures that if they’re not on this floor then they must be on another. There’s a wall that divides his floor by two but again, if there were people here he’d be able to hear them. He keeps a hand on the gun that’s strapped to his left thigh as he walks to the dividing wall. 

 

No one. 

 

There’s a door a stairwell at the side of the room, and Bucky walks over to it. Its open, it pushes open easily when he tries to get through, but there’s only one stairwell and it goes down. Unless someone comes from the top then he has the advantage going down, but he grabs his gone from the holster anyway and takes the safety off.

 

He moves slowly, ever so slowly, because he’s wary the door at the bottom will have a glass pane and someone will be able to go see him from the other side.  _ I can’t believe I’m doing this _ he thinks as he flips from one railing to another, landing on the floor silently. 

 

Once he gets to the bottom the first thing he does is places his ear on the wall and there’s nothing, he can’t hear a single thing, and when he looks through the glass he can’t see anything either. There’s no other place that Peter could be, that’s if he’s in this building, but there’s no point in bucky just standing here. He grabs the knife in one hand in case there’s something by the door waiting to ambush, and his gun in the other, still off the safety. He opens the door and there’s nothing there waiting to attack him but this lot has cars in it which is good news for him, and Peter if there’s anyone here with him. He slips behind a black jeep that’s parked a couple meters away while he figure out what the hell is going on. 

 

“You’re a meddler, Spiderman.” There’s a voice coming from far away, maybe a hundred meters that belongs to a woman, old, maybe Asian. Bucky can’t tell. What he knows is that Peter is in this lot somewhere, and that people are out to get him. The only good thing about this situation is that no one knows that Bucky is here.

 

“We thought you’d get the message last month when we left you that gift in your stomach. Evidently not. Spiders always are so greedy and you’re no different.” Bucky thought he got everyone who shot Peter. He went to the warehouse two weeks after and cleaned it out, the people he made talk are clearly loyal and didn’t want to rat everyone out.

 

Which means that the person responsible for Peter turning up on his fire escape that night is in the same room that Bucky is in right now.

 

He knows he could go in there and kill everyone single person in that room if he wanted to, but he’s just got a gun and a knife but he has no idea how many people are in there.  _ ‘I’ve got ten bullets in the gun and ten bullets ammo, it’s not automatic but that shouldn’t matter. The worst case scenario I get the knife or go hand to hand.’  _ Bucky stays behind the car and figures out some semblance of a plan, but he knows that as soon as he goes in it’ll just be his instincts taking care of the job for him instead, and he’s fine with that. He might not be an assassin anymore but at the end of the day he’s got the skills of one and he knows that not a damn person in that room is going to have anywhere close to the skills of a goddamn super soldier.

 

There’s a part of him that wants him to stay behind and wait a little longer, but he hears that woman speak again and the first thing he thinks is  _ ‘you could have killed Peter’ _ , and his desire to hold back dissipates.

 

He walks out behind the car he was hiding behind before anyone has even realised he’s there and counts at least three people, one with a gun, two without. The one with the gun is the most important to take out and just as they notice he’s there, Bucky’s finger as already left the trigger and he’s shooting the other two guys who are standing nearby. The one with the gun is dead, Bucky already knows. The other two will bleed out unless anyone cares enough to help them, but whoever this woman that their boss is, he doubts she cares enough about him to save them. 

 

The sound of gunshots ricochets off the walls of the lot, and there are eight other guys that appear from their positions behind the cars. Three of them have guns. He takes them out one by one, the precision from all those years hasn't gone anywhere. 

 

“ _ Mr Barnes?” _ Bucky was starting to doubt that Peter was even here but the sight of him perched on top of a Maserati ten cars away from him puts renewed motivation into him has he shoots at one more guy who’s pulled out one of his comrade’s weapons.

 

At the mention if his name, the woman takes a few steps forward towards him. She looks like she knows him, like this should be a meeting of familiarity but there's nothing about her that's familiar. 

 

“Ah, the Winter Soldier. I was wondering if I’d ever meet you once I heard that you lived here now.” The woman is old, and Bucky was right, she is Asian, looks Japanese but fuck if he’s about to speak to her in his old tongue. 

 

She moves her hand to the side firmly and her men stand down, going down onto their knees on the floor. Peter’s still on the car, ready to come down and help Bucky fight but now the tone of the room has changed, the sound of gunshots has dissipated and everyone is silent. 

 

Bucky stands in the middle, a gun in one and and his knife in the other, eyes fixed on the woman. He doesn’t recognise her. Her men stay on the ground, their weapons lay there too, while they wait for her to tell them what to do next. Except she doesn’t. 

 

“Satte, kudasai.” She’s told the men to leave, and they listen, not even picking up their weapons as they go. They leave behind both their dead men and guns on the floor and they file out the same way that Bucky came in without uttering a word to the woman who commands them. They don’t look back at Bucky or Peter either, despite being prepared to kill them both just a few minutes before. Like robots, they exit.

Bucky’s expecting the woman to try and finish off what the men started, but there’s no way if she did that that she’d succeed. They stand in silence, all three of them in a deadlock, before Peter jumps off the car and starts to edge closer to Bucky. 

 

Instead of the woman talking, or trying to do anything to them at all, she takes a few steps forward, and falls to her knees, her feet tucked behind her. The pieces all click; the men, her age, the Japanese she speaks and now she's on her knees and Bucky already knows what’s about to happen and ‘ _ Nono god no please don’t do it that’s not who I am anymore.’.  _ Once she’s on her knees she puts her hands forward, palms flush with the ground with her head down to the floor, bowing at him. Bucky’s hands are shaking,  his breaths are a little rough, and Peter’s standing beside him, not understanding what’s going on but knowing better than to speak. 

 

Bucky points his gun at where the woman’s forehead will be once she rises. 

 

“ _ Sensei,  _ kon’nichiwa. Hisashiburidesu.” She has no idea that Bucky’s gun is pointed at her, but by the time she next looks at him she’ll be dead. 

 

“Mr Barnes, what’s going on.” Peter sounds like a child, what he’s gotten himself into is out of his depth and he’s finally realising, only one bullet wound and a gunfight later. His voice is truly representative of his seventeen years of age.

 

“Turn around, Peter.” And he does, without complaint. Peter has been through a lot, seen a lot, but he’s never seen someone get killed like this and god if Bucky isn’t going to let this be the first time he sees it. He doesn’t need to see this, and he doesn’t want to Peter watch what he was built to do. 

 

And so she rises, and as she comes up, Bucky pulls the trigger and the bullet goes into her forehead, right in the middle, burying itself in her brain just as he knew it would. She falls back, lifeless. Her eyes are still open and her knees bent, but now there’s blood pooled around her head like an iconoclastic saint. Except, there is no saint. She will not be remembered.

 

“Don’t turn around. We need to go.” And Peter listens. He’s never heard this voice on Bucky before, it’s like he’s a husk of a person, and Bucky can feel himself dissociating from himself, no one’s called him  _ ‘sensei’  _ in too many years for him to count and there are too many memories of Russia and Japan that are fogging his brain and clawing up the sides of his head, so much so that he can barely breathe.

 

“Mr-, Bucky. Are you alright?” Peter sounds so unsure, as if acknowledging Bucky’s existence is going to give him the same fate as the woman out on the floor, and the fact that Peter’s scared of him is what grounds Bucky and forces him to come back down.  _ ‘You need to hold it together for him.’ _

 

“I knew her.” Bucky slides the gun back into its holster as they go up the stairwell. The men from before that she dismissed have long since gone, Peter would have been able to tell if they were there. 

 

Peter stares at him.

 

“So why did you kill her, then?” 

 

Bucky swallows. And swallows again. The knife goes back to its strap and they leave the parking lot together. Bucky doesn’t answer him because he can’t answer him. Not here, not right now. Peter knows that he was the Winter Soldier, but no one knows all of the things he did in his long, long career of servitude and torture. Not even his therapist knows even close to everything, and he’s not about to tell Peter like this. 

 

They walk and it’s as if Bucky’s life as he knows it right now is removed him from as a person, morphing around him as he looks in on it, turning into some hellscape he thought he’d already escaped. He did this to keep Peter safe and yet he ended up taking out someone in what was most likely Peter’s first proper murder he’d ever beared witness to, and he can’t tell whether the guilt of that, or the hold that Hydra and his past have over him in this moment is what’s making his breathing heavy and stopping him from processing  _ anything. _

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Its nearly four in the morning, and the streets are empty and yet Spiderman and the Winter Soldier are walking through Hell’s Kitchen together in relative silence before the sun rises.

 

“Why are you apologising?” God, Peter seems so genuine and innocent as if he truly doesn’t think Bucky has a reason to be apologising, but Becky knows Peter well enough to know what he really doesn’t. He just sat in a room and felt Bucky kill someone but has the audacity to ask why Bucky’s apologising and  _ god  _ this kid is so damn  _ stupid _ if it was any other time Bucky would have laughed and socked him round the head.

 

“You didn’t need to be there for that.” Bucky pulls off his gloves and shoves them into his pocket.

 

“But I was. You can’t change that.”

 

“Yeah. I know.”

 

“You never answered my question. Why did you kill her if you knew her.” Peter may be many things but of all of them Peter is persistent, Bucky will give him that. 

 

They keep walking, and Bucky sighs, formulating an answer. Where does he even start. 

 

“I trained her. Must have been the seventies or eighties.” He can’t go into details right now, he can’t do it. If he has to go into any more detail of what he did and how it happened. He can’t do it. All of his memories are colliding into one and it’s taking all of Bucky’s efforts not to fall onto the ground and punch the sidewalk and scream over and over and over again to make it  _ stop. _

 

Peter doesn’t ask how he got there. 

 

“Why did she have to die.”

 

Bucky feels like this question is pretty self explanatory, or maybe it’s obvious to him because he’s spent so much of his new life thinking about how much _ he _ deserved to be put down.

 

“I trained her. She’s like me. Anything that’s like me shouldn’t be alive.”

 

“That’s no-”

 

“I did New York a favour.”

 

Bucky’s not interested in hearing what reasons a seventeen year old has for him deserving to take up space on the earth.

 

They keep walking, and Peter looks at him and opens it his mouth as if to say something but thinks better of it and keeps his mouth shut, and he does it two or three times before he says anything.

  
  


“You deserve to be alive, Bucky. You do good things. You help people. You did bad things, but it wasn’t  _ you,”  _ and Bucky has to laugh at that one, because the things he’s done make him the person he is today more than anything else ever could. “And, whatever. If you weren’t here then who would look out for me.” And, yeah, that’s a good point. Bucky’s happy with that one. 

 

“As long as you don’t die on me we’re good.” And they both laugh, walking down the street. It’s still empty, and the sun rising is the only way of telling the passage of time. 

 

“Hey Peter.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Do you have school tomorrow?” Bucky completely forgot that Peter has that thing called school that he has to attend, and it feels irresponsible to be asking that when it’s pushing five am but you win some you lose some. 

 

Peter sighs at the question, checking his watch and seeing how few hours he has until he has to be there.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Alright. Well. You don’t anymore.” Peter needs some food and sleep and the school isn’t going to say no to Bucky Barnes so tells Peter he’ll call his school in a few hours to let them know he won’t be attending for the day. He’ll say he’s needed for some intern thing. Peter punches the air yells a quiet ‘hell yeah’. It’s sweet.

 

“You hungry?” Peter nods, too shy to ask for anything though, because he doesn’t want Bucky to spend money on him. 

 

“I’m hungry  _ and  _ exhausted. I just wanna sleep, man.” They’re talking as if nothing’s happened, hell, unless Peter realised from the start that he was being followed, he still hadn’t even asked how Bucky knew where he was. 

 

“We’ll go get salt beef sandwiches and you can stay over on my couch for tonight. I know a place.”

 

“‘S this so I stop stealing yours?”

 

Bucky turns his head and smiles, a small smile, but a smile nonetheless.

 

“Maybe.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> japanese translation: 'hello teacher, its been a long time.'
> 
> i hope you enjoyed!!! leave a comment or kudos if you did, also if you would like to subscribe to more marvel shitposting on a daily basis feel free to follow me on twitter @ddaengbucky !


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